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Amazon taps the brakes on AI data center spending as economic jitters spread

Wells Fargo says the cloud provider is “digesting” a wave of aggressive lease-ups.

Nia Warfield

Amazon, the largest US cloud provider, is quietly hitting pause on its AI infrastructure expansion as heated economic uncertainty pushes tech biggies to scrutinize their billion-dollar bets on AI.

In a note Monday, Wells Fargo said Amazon has paused some data center lease talks for its cloud division, especially overseas. The firm said that while Amazon isn’t canceling deals, it is “digesting” a wave of aggressive lease-ups. “They’re tightening pre-lease windows and being more selective with large power cluster leases through 2026,” analysts wrote.

Amazon pushed back against the suggestion of a shift, noting how its cloud rivals like Meta, Google, and Oracle are still active in the space. “This is routine capacity management,” AWS data center VP Kevin Miller wrote on LinkedIn. “No fundamental changes to our expansion plans.” Amazon Web Services announced in January that it will spend an additional $11 billion in Georgia on data centers to power its cloud-computing services.

Still, Amazon isn’t the only one trimming back. Last month, Microsoft scrapped data center projects totaling 2 gigawatts of power in the US and Europe, citing oversupply. And in February, Google dropped a $1 billion Texas lease for its data center ops.

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GM has reportedly rehired more than 100 former Cruise employees, 18 months after shuttering the robotaxi unit

GM has rehired more than 100 employees it let go early last year when it shuttered Cruise, its former robotaxi business, according to reporting by The Information.

The hiring spree, which also includes employees from Nvidia and Uber, is geared toward ramping up GM’s plans for personal-use self-driving vehicles and not robotaxis. The former had been the focus of Cruise, prior to GM shuttering it in 2024.

Reporting last fall revealed that GM was attempting to rehire some former Cruise employees, but the scope of that effort wasn’t clear. More than 1,000 employees were laid off when the automaker scrapped Cruise, which it invested $10 billion into.

Google’s Waymo, Cruise’s former chief rival, is now worth $126 billion after a $16 billion funding round earlier this year. The company says it’s serving 500,000 paid robotaxi rides per week in the US.

Exclusive: With Some 100 Rehired Cruise Employees, GM Pursues Eyes-Off Autonomous Cars

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Reporting last fall revealed that GM was attempting to rehire some former Cruise employees, but the scope of that effort wasn’t clear. More than 1,000 employees were laid off when the automaker scrapped Cruise, which it invested $10 billion into.

Google’s Waymo, Cruise’s former chief rival, is now worth $126 billion after a $16 billion funding round earlier this year. The company says it’s serving 500,000 paid robotaxi rides per week in the US.

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